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Windows Tip: Remove Old Files After Vista SP1 Installation

My friend and I were discussing Vista SP1′s performance since we both run Vista for our rigs. We’re on both ends of the spectrum though, with me running on Home Basic, and he, running on Ultimate. Not the same specs though since his rigs a juiced up gaming box and mine’s a workhorse lappie. One thing we’ve noticed is the memory consumption of physical memory. It’s taking up 1+ GB on a fresh boot. So we’re still running tests on whether this is just normal behavior or a classic Microsoft f*ck up.

Anyway, this post is about cleaning up after Vista SP1 has finished installing in your PC. The thing with service pack installations ever since XP SP1 and SP2 is that they don’t really mop up after changing all of your files. In XP, you can see do the clean up via Disk Cleanup and Add/Remove Programs but with XP, there’s no obvious process.

However, SP1 has a cleanup program. All you have to do is to press the Windows key or hit the Start Orb and in the Start Search line, enter: vsp1cln.exe. Run the program to clean up old and replaced files. No screencast for this one since it’s a pretty straightforward process.

Caveat: Only do this if you’re dead sure that you’re satisfied with SP1. This is almost an irreversible process unless of course you reformat and do a fresh install of Vista straight from the installer.